


recovery*

by heterophobe (orphan_account)



Series: aftermath* [2]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Depression, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Implied/Referenced Mpreg, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, brian-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 15:10:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5168444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/heterophobe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s no glory in going on. Hell, it’s boring; he’s pathetic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one.

**Author's Note:**

> So Hi! I'm back as promised (I didn't shirk I swear!) :) My very long break and re-plotting session finally led me to working out a me a clear plot!

The cramping, Brian decides, is the worst part of this whole ordeal. Because, the minute he gets it behind him, thinks he can get on with his fucking life, he’s reminded again, by the dull ache in his lower half, of everything painful and horrible that he’d thought he’d forgotten.

 

He supposes, this is why Justin can’t bury the bashing under booze, or men, or work, even momentarily: Because his body betrays him in his pursuit to forget. It's probably why he needs to talk about it, needs to them fuck slowly, and face-to-face afterward, when all Brian wants to do is drink himself into oblivion trying to forget that it happened.

 

On Thursday, the pain gets so bad that he keels over in the middle of a department meeting. It’s embarrassing, he feels weak. Cynthia all but forces him to go lie down, _thoughtful bitch_.

 

\--

 

His alarm clock glares from his bedside. He doesn’t have to be up for another hour, and yet, tired as ever – he lies awake. His abdomen aches.

 

His chest rises, then falls. Slow. The sheets feel hot, sticky against his back. His limbs are heavy like lead. There’s a body next to his; its arm draped over his chest. The smell of it is jarring, Brian feels as if he’s suffocating.

 

The trick shifts in his sleep, pulling his arm from Brian and curling in on himself. Brian can’t bring himself to look over at him now that he’s sober; he knows he’ll think his skin is too dark, and his freckles all in the wrong places, and his hair not quite blond enough. Then he’ll have to face how pathetic he’s let himself become.

 

 

Grudgingly, he forces himself up, ripping the sheets off of his body and swinging his legs over the edge of the bed in few, jolting actions.

 

He rings his fingers for a moment: contemplating, calculating. Then, he reaches for the pill bottle on his bedside and dry-swallows the few the rattle out over his palm. _Fuck it._

 

 

The concrete of the floor feels cold, painfully so, as the soles of his feel brush against it. Brian’s eyes burn, but they don’t water, and he doesn’t cry. He stands, the full weight of his naked body pressing his feet flat against the sensation, forcing the stark and jarring temperature onto him.

 

It’s comforting somehow; grounding. It reminds him that even though the compulsive routine he’d grown so accustomed to, the illusion of safe, of home he’d begun to build, had been uprooted so quickly, and violently that he felt as if the earth had been turned on its axis, things were just the same as they had been before. Heat rose before Justin, and heat continues to rise after. The laws of gravity ground him in more way than one (despite his every effort to transcend them). He is helpless against them, but only as helpless as he as always been, and as every creature to ever walk this earth has always been, and will always be.

 

Brian eyes around the floor, and bends down to pick up the nameless trick’s ratty shirt and worn jeans from the ground. Without looking back, he tosses the clothing in the general direction of the stirring body that lies on Justin’s side of his bed.

 

“Get dressed.” His words are clipped, collected, and follow quickly with a click of his jaw, as he struts arrogantly toward the living area.

 

By the time the trick ( _Harry? John? Whoever the fuck._ ) catches up to him, Brian’s standing impatiently by the open loft door, biting his tongue to keep from lashing out. Brian isn’t overtly irritated, but this cunt seems to completely disregard his body language, and leans in for a kiss goodbye.

 

Out of instinct, Brian stops him.

 

“Fuck off.” The words are out of his mouth before he realises why.

 

If the trick is upset by this, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he puts up his hands in mock surrender and backs slowly out of the loft; face complete with a piteous, and all-too-knowing smirk.

 

Brian feels sick.

 

\--

 

Since Justin walked out, Brian has been overwhelmed with this increasing sense of unfathomable, unjustified anticipation. It’s unprompted, but with each passing day it feels as if the ledge he’s standing on gets smaller and smaller, as if he’s waiting until he stumbles, messes up so bad he doesn’t recover, but he’s not willing to jump. Everything’s moving around him, but Brian’s stuck in the same compulsive routine, the same twisted moment, the same flat, and unfeeling emotion.

 

Just like every morning before this one: Brian showers (alone), he puts on his suit, he ties his tie. He takes off his tie. He puts his tie back on. He makes his coffee. He checks the alarm. He turns off the lights. He leaves for work. There’s no glory in going on. Hell, it’s boring; he’s pathetic.

 

This morning, _not_ like every morning before it, Brian sees the flowers out the sidewalk across the road from his building starting to blossom. He’s not sure why this, of all things, is depressing. He thinks about crashing his car into that lamppost outside Babylon on his drive to work that morning, but he decides it’s too obvious, not nearly as characteristically reckless (or passable as an accident) as, say, ODing at some club in Rio, or South Beach.

 

Work is work: He gets lost in an account, in preparing for a presentation, he yells at an art intern. Everything is exactly as it always has been, and for a minute, he forgets. Except, when he finally nails the pitch, wins the account, gets the boards that he goddamned asked for, the long-coming, relieving wave of satisfaction that he expects… never comes. He still feels restless; he still feels apathetic; he still feels the dull taste of his personal failures over any awaited sense of professional victory. Hell, he still feels his gut tearing itself to shreds despite taking a double-dose of non-prescription pain killers.


	2. two.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brian wakes up in a hospital.

Brian spends the first twenty minutes of his lunch break in a staring match with his turkey no-mayo sandwich. He gives up convincing himself to eat it when he starts seeing black spots.

 

Brian spends the last fifteen minutes of his lunch break limp in his chair, feeling dizzy. He supposes he knows something is wrong, he’s vaguely aware that he shouldn’t feel this nauseous, or light-headed, or drained. He thinks he probably would’ve known to go to the clinic for a follow-up sooner if he’d actually read any of the pamphlets Sam had sent him home with.

 

 He wonders if he should actually do something about the fact that his gut is throbbing and his head is pounding and he’s pretty sure if he stands up he’ll pass out, but he’s suddenly very tired, and he decides it’s best not make himself into some flailing queen. This’ll pass just like most other things he could’ve gone to the hospital for but didn’t: his broken nose at fourteen, the black eye that made him cry blood for two days, that knife in his shoulder blade that cut so deep he woke up every time he rolled onto his back in his sleep.

 

\--

 

Apparently, it doesn’t pass. Brian wakes up in a hospital. He can tell it’s a hospital because of the texture of the scratchy-ass sheets all over his body; it’s exactly the same bad quality thread-count that he’s felt in every hospital he’s ever been admitted since he was eight years old. His eyelids are droopy, and twigged together with dried sleep, his mouth is dry and his lips are chapped in the most unpleasant, uncomfortable kind of way. He can only imagine how he looks right now.

 

When he does manage to pry one eye open, he spots Mikey sitting near the end of his bed. He’s staring at the ground, his hands clasped together in a silent kind of anger. It exudes from him in waves. His brows are knitted with worry, Brian thinks that’s probably courtesy of him.

 

“Hey,” He’s surprised by the cracks in his own voice. Mikey looks up at him then, his eyes wide, he smiles.

 

“Hey.”

 

It’s quiet for a moment. Then the room is filled with an awkward, scraping kind-of sound from the wheels on Michael’s chair as he rolls himself up in line with Brian’s head.

 

He runs his fingers through Brian’s hair, asks him if he wants some water. Brian tries not to look to eager when he nods.

 

“The doctor said you had something called hematometra, it’s a build up of blood in the uterus, probably a late complication from your _miscarriage procedure_.” Mikey emphasises his annoyance at not being told, but decides it’s best not to linger on it when he sees how Brian grits his teeth in a forced smirk. He knows Brian, knows his tells. Brian’s eyes dart, and then fixate on something conveniently somewhere out of Mikey’s direct line of sight.

 

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

 

“No.” His fingers toy with the stretch of blanket underneath them, his reply is insistent and frustrated.

 

“Justin’s in the waiting room,”

 

This seems to draw his attention, “Why?” His voice is laced with an angry kind of confusion, like he can’t possibly understand why Justin would want to be there, and even if he could he’d tell him to fuck off despite it.

 

“He was getting sutures in the ER hallway when I walked in, something about a rose bush. His hands were pretty torn up. He didn’t seem all that happy to see me. I told him you were here.”

 

“Why _the fuck_ would you do _that_?”

 

“Because he asked why I was here." His eyes scrunch as he looks over Brian, as if he's trying to figure something out. "He said he was going to leave before you woke up, I think he guessed you wouldn't want to see him.”

 

"Well, he'd be right." Brian grits his teeth some more, ringing his fingers. Mikey can practically hear the wheels turning in his head. He seems angry, but when Brian finally does speak it’s quiet; clipped with annoyance, sure; but Mikey can hear the fear behind Brian’s question: “Did you tell him?”

 

“So it’s his?”

 

Brian looks at Mikey incredulously as if to say “Who the fuck else do you think I let put their dick in my ass?”, but shakes his head and turns his attention back to the scratchy sheets under his fingertips.

 

They don’t talk for a long time after that. Mikey, like usual, is the one to break the silence.

 

“No, I didn’t tell him." He pauses, takes a deep breath, and for a second Brian thinks that's all he's going to say. " _But you should._ ”

 

Mikey stays with him all night, Brian tells him to go home and shower because he fucking stinks but he is politely ignored. Michael doesn’t even flinch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can probably tell I wrote Mikey a little more mature than he was in canon s3 but I thought the story'd work better if he was looking for what Brian needed rather than being an asshole (kind of like in s4 after Brian kicks Justin out) idkBrian wakes up in a hospital.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, Please let me know what you thought x


End file.
